Angel 5.21 Power Play

[thebratqueen]

Damn it! There is NOT only one episode left.

Sigh. Okay.

Can't talk about much as I'm pretty much as spoiled as you can be for the finale without actually having been on the set. So I'll try to save my comments about foreshadowing and symbolism and how they handled stuff for next week, when I predict I'll have a lot to talk about.

Quick comments only then.

Slightly rushed ep, and slightly talky ep, but OTOH I can't hold that against them at all given that they had a short amount of time to do a lot of exposition and still get some action and emotions in. Which makes David Fury a good pick for writer because, as always, David F loves to tell us what the thing is. So it worked well for what they were doing here, though I wanted to beat the word "bloody" out of his body and possibly buy him another Britishism to play with for Christmas.

One thing I want to give credit for (as I have to not give credit yet for other things due to spoilers) is that this ep really worked well to gear up the final battle. You could feel the characters returning to their core selves, even Wesley who'd been kissing insanity on the lips just last week (though admittedly not as bad as the week before). A bit of a quick heal? Possibly. But the point of this story was not "And now we show believable inter-episode canon" but "and now we tell part one of the final story." We knew Wes was going to get sane again at some point, and catch his snap again at some point. It doesn't matter when or how. It matters that we see the real Wes, and the real Gunn, and the real everybody as they go to their last hurrah.

Speaking of Wes (as I am so known to do) I loved the use of the characters' personalities and relationships as a tool. Angel knew the best way to get Wes on the trail was to drop a clue in Wes's lap. He made sure Wes investigated the theme park, he sent Wes the cryptic note, then he turned the screws in Wes whenever he needed to make sure the point was driven home. Add on top of that, but when Angel is doing his "power" speech, notice that when he's standing direclty in front of Wesley none of his words are false. Angel is speaking the truth for the actual plan and he's making sure Wes is the one to hear it. Great touch. Very light handed, and the sort of "no, we aren't going to drop an anvil in your lap, you have to pay attention" thing that this show is known for.

Annnd at that point I gotta clam up except for the msc comments. Sorry guys, there'll be more analysis next week promise. But until then:

I know some people freaked about the Nina thing but I liked it. She's not being played up as Angel's next Twu Wub, she's just a girlfriend, somebody he likes to hang with. Why not get a booty call in before you go in for the last one? I thought it was played well, and the two of them had a nice friendly chemistry.

Noticed the mike problems were back again during the Spike/Illyria scenes. Guess it wouldn't be a full circle for this season without those.

Was that the shortest teaser the show's ever had? Gotta imagine it ranks up there, if nothing else.

I'm reading my notes as I type here, so watch me skip over the bit about how _____ was a good foreshadowing of _____ without hitting you over the head with it. Ahem.

Lotta B words in the exposition about the Funville demon. Demon's name was B, girl's last name had a B. Spike's saying Bloody all over the place. David was apparently low on inspiration with the other letters that week.

Angel in sweats? Adorable.

Spike can sense souls now? O... kay. I'll fanwank that and assume he means now that he has one himself.

And of course Spike's random comment about Angel and intimacy means that we won't be hearing from Kita for a while ;)

Speaking of characters being their core selves, this was the first time I really felt like Spike's soul was doing something. Yeah, he was going through the hero motions before but it never seemed believable to me. This time he really felt like a character who cared about the little guy, and fighting the good fight.

Loved the creeping in of the Angelus mannerisms. Good acting/directing there.

Also? Angel may be many things on the scale of good and evil, but at least the man knows the correct way to hold a glass of champagne. Gotta give him props for that.

Nice to see the return of Wes's main motivation in life, which since s1 has always been that he backs Angel because Angel chose to fight the good fight. It's nice in terms of a shout-out, but also in terms of broadening Wes's reactions to things post Fred's death. Given how even Spike was rabbiting on about how much Fred meant to him, it was nice to see Wes, at least, able to get his brain out of that mode and focus on the real problem. This was the Wesley of The Ring all the way to the Wesley of Salvage. He fights for good, and he knows doing that means keeping the Champion in the game.

Adore Hamilton, as always. And again mourn that we were stuck with Eve all this time instead of him.

And finally they gave me another shout-out with calling Angel a king. Ahhhh.

[sniff] There is NOT only one episode left. Shut up!